It can be of advantage for ticket dispensers to dispense tickets sequentially with the last ticket purchased by an individual being the last ticket output by the ticket dispenser. It can be of further advantage for the tickets to stack in the same order in which they are created, with the tickets facing the operator and with the last ticket on top. Prior art ticket dispensers of this kind have incorporated complex mechanical solutions to achieve the above.
The following four U.S. patents are of interest.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,669, issued Jun. 3, 1986, to Lohse et al. discloses a direct-recording printer and a housing structure therefor. The printer includes a thermo printer contacting a paper web as it is advanced by a platen. Once the web has been printed, it exits the housing along a horizontal pass beneath a cutting bar. A cutting edge on the end of the cutting bar allows the paper web to be cut.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,376, issued Dec. 27, 1983, Teraoka discloses a label printer to print labels on a roll. Once the labels are printed, they are ejected from the printer housing at an angle through a slot in the printer housing.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,593,833, issued Jul. 20, 1971 to Bretti, discloses a device for supporting and guiding a roll of paper in an accounting machine. The machine has a reservoir for a paper roll, with rollers in the bottom of the reservoir to facilitate rolling of the roll as the web is unwound from the roll.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,695,171, issued Sep. 22, 1987 to Sapitowicz, discloses a horizontally or vertically orientable compact ticket processor. The processor has a U-shaped transport pass with input and output slots in closely situated parallel planes. An overrunning clutch forms part of the transport drive between the reader and the printer to shorten the transport pass by permitting the leading edge of the ticket to enter the printer while the ticket is being read by the reader. In operation, individual tickets are fed into the input slot and are conveyed to the printer before being discharged via the output.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a novel ticket dispenser.